Hanoi forms National Liberation Front for South Vietnam

Observing the increasing unpopularity of the Diem regime, on 12 December 1960, Hanoi authorized the creation of the National Liberation Front as a common front controlled by the communist party in the South.

Successive American administrations, as Robert McNamara and others have noted, overestimated the control that Hanoi had over the NLF. Diem's paranoia, repression, and incompetence progressively angered large segments of the population of South Vietnam. According to a November 1960 report by the head of the US military advisory team, Lieutenant General Lionel C. McGarr, a "significant part" of the population in the south supported the communists.The communists thus had a degree of popular support for their campaign to bring down Diem and reunify the country.